


don't have much baggage

by anonymous_yet_again



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Rent (2005)
Genre: Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Couch Cuddles, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Needs a Hug (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Movie Night, Rent References, brief suggestion of, could be read as
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:27:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22948537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_yet_again/pseuds/anonymous_yet_again
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley decide to watchRentbecause, you know, a musical where everyone is kind of dying at different speeds and the theme is to take each day as it comes is a great one for two immortal, 6,000 year old beings to watch.  What could go wrong?
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	don't have much baggage

**Author's Note:**

> The title is, of course, from "I'll Cover You," which is, of course, from _Rent_. As a phrase, it is, of course, completely inaccurate when applied to our immortal pair.
> 
> CW: references to AIDS-related illness/death (vague, and mostly the characters in _Rent_ , but wanted it in place regardless).

Both Crowley and Aziraphale claimed to be responsible for various aspects of musical theater. To their bosses, sometimes, they had claimed the exact same aspects as each other--after all, neither Down There nor Up Above really checked on the fine details. At this point, actually, Crowley had lost track of most of what they’d really done; he suspected, like most complicated things, that it had been mostly humans in the end. Although Aziraphale, who had a soft spot for Eliot’s original _Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats_ , had never quite forgiven Crowley for _Cats_ (2019). Which was reasonable.

Still, just because he had some background knowledge that he’d used to embellish reports didn’t mean that Crowley actually _watched musicals_. That seemed much too Not Cool, although after that one about some dead American guy--Hamilton?--had come out a few years ago, the general public seemed to have started to change their mind about musicals, the coolness thereof. Crowley had been a little distracted by nannying and the end of the world at the time, though. All of which meant that when Aziraphale greeted him in the back room of the bookshop brandishing a DVD--who still used DVDs? More to the point, since when had Aziraphale had a DVD player?--that said _Rent_ on the cover, Crowley had no idea what he was getting into.

“Did you actually _pay_ for this?” Crowley asked as he squinted through dark lenses at the variously-tinted photos of serious and bohemian-looking people on the cover. “No one pays to watch things anymore, angel. I would have showed you the websites, but I didn’t know you had anything in here with a screen.” He glowered at the small television that had definitely _not_ just been created out of raw firmament shortly before he arrived. “Does that have _dials_?”

“I borrowed it from Anathema,” said Aziraphale piously, plucking the case back from Crowley’s hands. “The DVD, not the television. She says it’s a classic. Also, I thought we should try something different from me reading and you, er, lounging. A movie night makes a nice change.”

Crowley had no objections to their still new post-Apocalypse routine of reading and lounging, especially since his lounging usually ended up with his head on Aziraphale’s lap and the angel’s hand absentmindedly in his hair. But, despite the appearances he tried to keep up, he also had no objections to any way that Aziraphale wanted to spend time together. Also, he was distracted by a memory. “Wait, didn’t you see this already? And it wasn’t a musical, it was a...play? I remember you said something in passing at the Dowling’s…”

“I’m impressed,” said Aziraphale from where he was messing with the DVD player. He was just saying the kind of thing people--beings--said about remembering stuff, but it sounded like actual praise, and he said it with a little smile that made Crowley look away before he--spontaneously combusted? Anyway, something would have happened if he’d seen that smile for too long. “It was indeed a musical play before they made a movie, but I haven’t seen that since right after it very first came out. I’ve never seen the movie at all, and I thought you might like it.”

Crowley remembered something else. “Wait again, I think I remember Anathema mentioning--isn’t this bloody sad?”

“Well,” said Aziraphale, still struggling to get the DVD player to work. “A bit, perhaps. But very, forgive me, nice, as well. And there are funny bits.”

“Oh, well, _funny bits_ ,” said Crowley, as if that decided it. As if he’d ever have said “no.” “For G--for uh, my sake, angel, just let me put the DVD in.”

\------------------

“You’re telling me that one of them’s _named Angel_?”

“I hadn’t forgotten,” said Aziraphale, looking a little guilty from the bit of face Crowley could see. He was leaning on his own angel’s shoulder, and didn’t feel like picking his head up enough to see his expression better. “But I hadn’t really considered the implications, I suppose.”

“He just better be good, that’s all,” Crowley muttered. Onscreen, Angel and Collins discovered that they both had AIDS. Crowley frowned a little.

\------------------

“All right, she’s pretty good,” Crowley allowed once “Today 4 U” was well underway. Out of the corner of his eye, Aziraphale smiled down at him.

\------------------

Crowley wanted to say something about “I’ll Cover You,” but there was nothing cool about how cute it was. Definitely something nice, though. He and Aziraphale had done the slow type of transition ubiquitous to two people watching a movie together who enjoy physical contact with each other; Aziraphale was now sitting sideways on the couch with his legs along the seat, and Crowley had his back to Aziraphale’s chest and his head under the angel’s chin. Aziraphale’s arms were loosely around him, their fingers tangled together, and Crowley spared a moment to wonder which of them was covering whom. Instead of saying anything, he squeezed Aziraphale’s hands a little as Angel (onscreen) slipped the coat over Collins’ shoulders.

(Much later, Aziraphale mentioned the lines that had been left out of the film: “Are we a thing?” “Darling, we’re everything.” He just happened to have remembered them from the live performance fifteen years ago, he explained.)

\------------------  
“Oh my G--gah! Does everyone have AIDS?” Onscreen, Roger and Mimi took their AZT break, and Crowley scowled.

“This may be some of what Anathema was referring to,” Aziraphale allowed from above Crowley’s head.

\------------------

When the first person from the Life Support group disappeared from their chair during “Without You,” Crowley’s whole body jerked in surprise.

“Oh, dear,” said Aziraphale, tightening his hold slightly.

\------------------

“I’ll Cover You (Reprise)” was almost the last straw. Crowley didn’t look up, but he suspected Aziraphale was crying, a little. Crowley himself was narrowly managing to keep from sobbing out loud, but tried to pretend he wasn’t. He wished a little for his sunglasses, which he’d left on a side table somewhere before they’d even started the movie.

After the Reprise ended, as the group of friends started to argue, the urge to wail out loud grew very slightly less, which was why it was a surprise when Mark sang, “Perhaps it’s because I’m the one of us to survive,” and Crowley felt a loud, gasping sob tear out of his chest. Aziraphale, proving that he was much better at technology than he pretended, immediately paused the movie.

“Sorry,” said Crowley miserably. He’d been enjoying it, too. Mostly. He tried to turn and bury his face in the angel’s chest.

“My dear,” said Aziraphale warmly, and didn’t let him get away that easily. He didn’t do anything drastic, really, but he moved his own head and tugged gently on Crowley’s shoulders until Crowley was forced to raise his head just enough to look into his own angel’s watery eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Freddie Mercury died of AIDS,” said Crowley, just to put something out there while he figured out what else to say. “He was the lead singer for Queen,” he added when Aziraphale started to say something that Crowley just knew would have been, “Was he a friend of yours?”

“I’m sorry,” said Aziraphale, making Crowley feel fond and completely insufficient because Aziraphale always made an apology sound both merited and complete.

“You and I, we didn’t, uh, talk much, in the 80s and 90s,” said Crowley, who knew full well that they hadn’t talked at all. “I travelled, a bit. Went to, uh, California, and New York.” He shrugged, knowing that Aziraphale would feel the motion even if he couldn’t fully see it. “I ended up hanging out with a lot of--well, easy to do the tempting when they’re already, uh, sinning, technically. The drugs, of course, not the sex part. Although I mostly did, uh, things to dealers.” Actually, he’d watched a few--not friends, just acquaintances, because that was easier--get clean when their dealer mysteriously stopped coming around. “Also, sometimes I could wear--you know, like when I was Nanny--I didn’t change my corporation or anything, just my clothes. So, you know, I fit in OK.”

Aziraphale hummed quietly and tunelessly, and tightened his grip again. “It’s, I mean, they always die, eventually, and we don’t,” said Crowley into Aziraphale’s chest. “So it feels like it should be the same. But it’s worse when they die faster. I don’t know why, but it is.”

“Have you heard of the Terrance Higgins Trust?” asked Aziraphale.

Crowley nodded a little against the angel’s chest, and then lifted his head suddenly as some of the possible implications of the question came to him. “You mean…?”

“I may have suggested something like it, put a word in a few people’s ears,” said Aziraphale, and Crowley couldn’t tell if he was talking about miracles or just talking. “Since the nightclub where Terry collapsed was called Heaven--”

“I’ve heard of Heaven,” said Crowley drily.

“Well, They hadn’t,” said Aziraphale, almost as dry, “so I even got a few officially sanctioned miracles in there.”

Crowley laughed for longer than was really warranted. “Should we finish the movie?” he said when he was done.

“If you’d like,” said Aziraphale dubiously. “I am sorry--obviously, Anathema was more right than I had perhaps remembered.”

“Gotta know how it ends, now,” said Crowley. “You get it going, you obviously know how.”

\------------------

Crowley knew that the ending of someone being saved from oblivion by a person called Angel was hopelessly cheesy, even if the song was OK, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

**Author's Note:**

> The Terrence Higgins Trust is a British charity around sexual health and eradicating HIV/AIDS in particular. I just discovered it doing research for this fic (I am not from the UK) so don't really know much more than is in the text. If you want to know more, please search it online!


End file.
